The group this week organised demonstrations outside the Labour party HQ against intervention in Syria.

The piece, published last year, appears to justify the hostage-taking by arguing it followed a series of violent episodes in the Middle East, including the creation of Israel itself.

It describes the athletes as “preferred” victims, and says their deaths should be placed in the “context” of conflict in the decades before.

“Just 23 years before the Olympic incident, Israel had been created through ethnically cleansing much of the indigenous Palestinian population,” the article claimed, going on to list a series of conflicts in the country's early history.

“The violence continued, and beginning in 1968 Israeli forces repeatedly savaged 150 or more towns and villages in south Lebanon alone. By the time of the Munich Olympics, Israel held hundreds of prisoners in its notorious prison system.

“It is widely known, but rarely stated, that the goal of the Munich hostage-taking was not to kill them; it was to return the athletes to Israel in return for Israel returning its Palestinian prisoners.”

Two of the athletes were killed when the Black September gang stormed their apartment in the Olympic village.

Another nine were killed during the rescue operation by German police, during which the hostage-takers shot some of their captives. Whether some were accidentally killed by police snipers is disputed.

The article describes the rescue operation as “unnecessary”, saying Israel had refused to cede to the terrorists' demands, and blamed police for some of the deaths.

Mr Corbyn was the chairman of Stop the War from September 2011 until his election as Labour leader earlier this year.

He is a vociferous critic of Israel, which he describes an “apartheid state”, and was once recorded referring to terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “our friends”.

The piece will fuel claims among critics that rather than being a pacifist movement, Stop the War Coalition is merely anti-Western and anti-Israeli.